From: Ron M <rm_rails@...>
Date: 2005-11-15T03:16:20+09:00
Subject: Time out of range when selecting from database?

Why does Time allow such a limited set of years:

    irb> Time.mktime('2205-01-01')
    ArgumentError: time out of range

This especially annoying when other classes like DBI use
the Time class, and when a 200-year-lease in a database
throws an exception when loaded by Ruby.

irb(main):028:0> dbh.select_all("select begin_date,end_date from leases")
ArgumentError: time out of range
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/sql.rb:60:in `gm'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/sql.rb:60:in `as_timestamp'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/DBD/Pg/Pg.rb:777:in `as_timestamp'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/sql.rb:80:in `coerce'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/DBD/Pg/Pg.rb:395:in `convert'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/DBD/Pg/Pg.rb:755:in `fill_array'
         from (irb):28:in `each_with_index'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/DBD/Pg/Pg.rb:754:in `fill_array'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/DBD/Pg/Pg.rb:707:in `fetchrow'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/DBD/Pg/Pg.rb:644:in `fetch'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/dbi.rb:1155:in `fetch_all'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/dbi.rb:1154:in `fetch_all'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/dbi.rb:919:in `fetch_all'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/dbi.rb:675:in `select_all'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/dbi.rb:645:in `execute'
         from /usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi/dbi.rb:671:in `select_all'
         from (irb):28irb(main):029:0>

Surely if ruby can transparently do math between Fixnum's and Bignum's,
it could handle transparent math outside the range of the Time class,
can't it?